A seat that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won by a whisker, Dubbak, is now a hotbed of internal squabbles among the BJP cadre. The centre of the conflict is incumbent MLA Raghunandan Rao.
Protesting the oneupmanship of Raghunandan in the constituency, long-time BJP workers are up in arms against their legislator. A group of BJP leaders openly expressed their dissent and raised the issue with the party’s state leadership.
They allege that Raghunandan is a Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) covert and say that leaving the seniors in a lurch, he is favouring the recent joinees. Now, the rebellion has almost reached its crescendo. The BJP workers in the segment are disowning him alleging that a person who helped Owaisi in getting bail is harmful to the BJP
They say that Raghunandan is behaving as if he is bigger than the party. The party workers observe that he was moving away from the party’s core ideology and distancing himself from loyalists.
All the recent developments establish that Raghunandan’s win in the Dubbak bypoll by a slender margin of 1000+ votes was just a flash in the pan. However, the question remains whether there was any conspiracy from BJP state president Bandi Sanjay to unsettle Raghunandan.
The first-time MLA is projected to be one of the front runners for the state president’s post if there is a change of guard. Also recently, Raghunandan made some indirect comments on the leadership of Bandi Sanjay. All these episodes bring to the fore how the BJP is failing to hold its flock together.